A Pterygium Growing Over a Little Girl’s Eyes, Pain So Bad She Cried Nonstop? Doctor Zhang Xichun Used One Herb – Antelope Horn (Lingyangjiao) – to Drain Liver Fire
Patient’s search terms: pterygium / growth over the eye / eyes hurt terribly / red swollen eyes / flesh growing over a child’s eyes Medical terms: pterygium · liver fire flaring upward · red, swollen, painful eyes
Opening: one single herb cured a little girl who cried her heart out
Today’s story is very short — and very remarkable. Doctor Zhang Xichun used exactly one herb and made the “flesh” growing over a little girl’s eyes disappear. Let’s start with that herb: lingyangjiao (antelope horn). You can buy it in Chinese pharmacies today, sold either as antelope horn shreds or antelope horn powder. Doctor Luo Dalun adds an important note: this is not the horn of the Tibetan antelope — it’s the horn of the ordinary antelope. In the old days it was precious and rare; nowadays it is actually plentiful and easy to find.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The story is short, but the lesson is packed with value. Doctor Zhang Xichun believed in “single-herb experiments” — he personally tested every herb he prescribed, and only wrote it into his book after he was confident about what it could do. The antelope horn we meet today is exactly such a herb: one he verified himself as an excellent remedy for draining liver fire.
Who was the patient? The little granddaughter of Fengtian’s tomb guardian
The patient was the granddaughter of Wang Liuqiao, the duhu of Fengtian — a little girl of only five or six. What is a “duhu of Fengtian”? Doctor Luo Dalun explains: they were the guardians of the Qing imperial tombs. Shenyang has the Northern Mausoleum (Bei Ling) and the Eastern Mausoleum (Dong Ling), where the Qing emperors are buried; the families left behind to guard those tombs were called the duhu of Fengtian.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This detail is fascinating. At that time there were many Japanese people in Shenyang (then called Fengtian) — Zhang Zuolin and the Japanese hadn’t fallen out yet, so quite a few Japanese doctors ran clinics there. When the little girl’s eyes went bad, the family’s first call was to a Japanese doctor.
How sick was she? The “flesh” in her eyes had grown over everything
The Japanese doctor treated her for several days with no result, and finally said flat out: “I can’t treat this anymore — please find someone more capable.” The family had no choice but to hurry over to Doctor Zhang Xichun. One look, and Doctor Zhang saw it: the pterygium had grown over both of this child’s eyes!
What is a pterygium? It is extra tissue that grows out of the conjunctiva of the eye. It starts as swelling, and as it grows it gradually covers the eye. This little girl’s eyes were covered with growth — she could barely see anything — and the pain was excruciating. A five- or six-year-old girl, crying and crying all day long, in terrible distress.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Look at the character for pterygium in Chinese (胬) — the top part is the character for “slave,” and the bottom is “flesh” — literally, extra flesh that grows in the eye. The eye was covered by it and hurting that badly; the parents’ hearts were breaking just watching her.
What did Doctor Zhang Xichun think? The liver opens into the eyes — when liver fire blazes, the eyes suffer
Doctor Zhang Xichun reasoned as follows: the liver opens into the eyes (gan kai qiao yu mu). When liver fire flares up, disease shows up in the eyes — that is how hot-natured eye problems arise. So what drains liver fire? Antelope horn.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why antelope horn? Because if you split the horn open, you’ll find something inside that looks like a piece of wood. The ancients considered antelope horn to belong to the wood element, and wood corresponds to the liver — the principle of “like qi attracts like qi” (tong qi xiang qiu). The horn can penetrate into the liver channel, drain its pathogenic heat, and also clear the minister fire (xiang huo) that lodges in the liver and gallbladder. That’s why it works so well for hot-natured eye disease.
The prescription: one herb, two qian of antelope horn — just six grams
Doctor Zhang Xichun prescribed antelope horn, two qian (6 grams), decocted into a soup for the child to drink. The lovely thing was that antelope horn decoction has almost no taste, so the little girl was happy to drink it — down it went in one gulp. By then it was already nine o’clock in the evening.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice this — one single herb, six grams, nothing else. This is Doctor Zhang Xichun’s style: the confidence that comes from single-herb experimentation. He once said that many practitioners write a whole formula with several herbs at once, yet have no real idea of how strong each herb is or what its nature truly is. He was different: he tested his herbs one by one, and only taught what he had verified. If he hadn’t experimented with it, he wouldn’t write it; if he didn’t understand it, he wouldn’t write it — that was his intellectual honesty.
Pain stopped at midnight; by morning, half the pterygium was gone
At midnight, the child fell asleep peacefully — the pain was gone. The next morning, when they looked, half the pterygium had already receded! Doctor Zhang Xichun then had the dregs re-decocted and given to the child once more — and the girl recovered completely.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Just those six grams of antelope horn dissolved an eye full of pterygium that had caused such terrible pain. Even by today’s standards, that result is astonishing.
Why is antelope horn so good? It clears heat without being cold in nature
In Doctor Zhang Xichun’s view, antelope horn clears heat, yet it is not cold in nature at all. Some people are afraid to use it because they assume it must be strongly cold, but Doctor Zhang said that simply means they don’t know the herb well. Other cold-natured herbs — the heat-clearing, toxin-resolving category, for example — tend to upset the stomach when used too much, causing loose stools and diarrhea; antelope horn does not.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So antelope horn is a particularly fine herb for penetrating and draining heat and fire from the liver and gallbladder. Even today we often see people — especially children — with “excess fire” that makes things grow in or around the eyes. As long as you judge it to be a heat pattern — that classic red, swollen, hot, painful presentation — antelope horn is a herb worth considering for draining the heat.
What does this case teach us?
First, the liver opens into the eyes — hot-natured eye problems are usually tied to liver fire. Second, antelope horn is a gentle, effective herb worth keeping in mind — if you ever run into a similar problem, it’s good to know that such a herb exists.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Luo Dalun says he will continue tomorrow with how much antelope horn to use and exactly how to use it. See you in the next episode!
Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records, from Records of Chinese Medicine with Reference to the West (published in installments 1918–1934).